TV Review: NBC's 'Revolution'

NBC premieres its new drama, Revolution, on Monday at 10 p.m. to ask viewers what life would be like without electricity…and television. The following are reviews from TV critics around the Web, compiled by B&C.

“While Revolution was created by J.J. Abrams, who also created Lost, this one feels different. It relies less on mystery and more on physical action, like a video game-style scene where Miles, Charlie and their small band wipe out what looks like about a hundred bad guys. If these guys can’t save the world, maybe they can at least give NBC a hit.”

“Seriously, I want Revolution to work, despite the fact that positive experiences with dramas like this are more rare than NBC’s accidental encounters with healthy ratings — they’re just too inconsistent to believe in. One thing you can be sure of: I’ll assess the show again in the coming months, once I decide which part of my brain was right.”

“It’s all far from terrible, but there are few gasps, goosebumps or laugh-out-loud moments-the sort of things that convert wanting to like an ambitious show into actually liking it for itself. Revolution has promise.”

“But as a professionally discerning adult, I could not help but notice that the characters are fairly stock, the situations familiar and, some nifty digital backgrounds notwithstanding, the production continually felt more like an elaborate game of let’s pretend than it did a window into some real other world. I didn’t buy a second of it.”

“Look, we’re all going to have to just go with it. The pilot is a winner, and it will pull you back the following week. The question is whether the story not told in the pilot will be the story that keeps viewers around or sends them away.”